Composition Tools in Lightroom

Composition should start before you ever raise the camera to your eye, but that said, there are times when you need to square things away after the fact. Sometimes it's simply a matter of straightening a horizon and others it's all about cropping away the extra stuff you planned to crop before you ever squeezed the trigger.

Photograpy Life had a great post last night that reminded me of some of the composition tools available in Lightroom. I have used the Rule Of Thirds template so long that I've adjusted my eye to compose around that when necessary, but it's nice to have the other options. The one I didn't realize existed, and is probably the most valuable for me personally, is the Aspect Ratio overlay for the crop tool, that lets me see if there's a different ratio that would work better for me. I hate the fact that I frame in camera for a 2x3 ratio, print to paper that's 8.5x11, and can only seem to find frames I like for 8x10, but with this overlay, I can at least see what size might work best for me if I'm looking to print as it's lots easier to see them all at once rather than switching it in the crop tool menu (which also resized and moves the frame sometimes).

So much frustration, framing a shot for the 3/2 ratio on the D600, and then cropping for a 5/4 ratio because of frame size. I agree with what you are saying; and one solution I have found is to search the local Goodwill store for various frame sizes, as they are abundant and cheap.

Yessir, went over these in my LR5 workshop (12 hours worth).

Crop Overlays in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom™ | Holy Crop!

Wauw! Awesome!